April 23, 1963
William Lewis Moore, a postal worker from Baltimore, decided to march from Chattanooga to Mississippi’s capital during his one-person march against segregation, wearing a sandwich board that read, “Equal Rights for All” and “Mississippi Or Bust.”
Instead, a Klansman gunned him down in Attala, Alabama, shooting him twice in the head with a .22 rifle. The Klansman believed to have killed him went unpunished.
Moore, who was raised in Mississippi, had planned to deliver a letter to Mississippi Gov. Ross Barnett that read, “Do not go down in infamy as one who fought the democracy for all which you have not the power to prevent. … The white man cannot be truly free himself until all men have their rights. Each is dependent upon the other.”
Folk singer Phil Ochs wrote a song about Moore, among the 40 martyrs listed on the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama. In 2003, Mary Stanton wrote a book on Moore’s journey, “Freedom Walk: Mississippi or Burst.” Seven years later, his hometown in Binghamton, New York, built a plaque to honor him. In 2019, a historic marker was unveiled at the sight of Moore’s slaying.
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